I Don't Need a Husband to Prove My Life Is Worth Living.

Andzhela Angelova

9 hours ago

4 min read

I see so many successful, beautiful women building businesses, creating ecosystems for other women, growing communities, achieving wealth and becoming an inspiration to women around the world. Outspoken women who stand firmly and unapologetically in who they are. Women with so much inner power that you cannot miss them or ignore their message. Women you admire not only for what they have achieved, but for who they are and the path they took to get there.

And yet, somehow, their success can still be measured by whether they have a man beside them. And I can’t stop wondering: is marriage still the only acceptable accomplishment in a woman’s life?

The most hurtful part is that sometimes these questions come from other women.

Questions about a woman’s private life are not always asked out of pure curiosity. Sometimes they feel like an attempt to diminish her, to find an explanation for how she could possibly stand so firmly in her beliefs, vision and identity without someone beside her.

How can she achieve so much without a man helping her? Who is behind her? Who made it possible?

Except, most of the time, no one handed it to her on a silver platter.

She had to go to battle, not only with herself and her own beliefs, but with her surroundings and sometimes even the people closest to her. Because women like her are often misunderstood. And for the most part, no one is cheering for her except herself.

But that’s what makes her extraordinary and magnetic. She stopped waiting for someone else’s approval. She stopped waiting to be chosen. She chose herself. And now you can’t stop looking at her.

But even then, there is always another question.

Is she a mother?

If she isn’t, perhaps that is why she is successful. Maybe she had more freedom. Maybe she is selfish. Maybe something is wrong with her because she doesn’t want children.

If she is a mother, perhaps she is successful but neglects her responsibilities. As if motherhood gives you superpowers. Maybe it gives you better organisational skills sometimes, and an impressive ability to navigate stress, change and make do with three hours of sleep and coffee for days. Wait, maybe that is a superpower.

And if she is divorced, she can suddenly be looked at as if she is expired goods, someone replaced, unloved, unworthy. But a woman can be divorced and whole. She can raise her children, have a fulfilling life, have hobbies and friendships, build a career and still want more from life.

And yet, there is always someone ready to place a label of approval or disapproval on her based on whether she has a man in her life.

I may regret this or change my mind in a few years, but for now, this is how I see it.

The word wife has lost some of its appeal to me. Perhaps once, it represented stability, safety, happiness, wholeness, love and understanding. But the more time passes since my divorce, the more the title sounds like a cage to me: the endless invisible labour, the hundreds of roles you are expected to take on, the spoken and unspoken rules you are supposed to follow. And honestly, it sounds exhausting.

That doesn’t mean I think marriage is a bad thing. I love love. I am genuinely happy for people who find a partnership that makes their life fuller. I simply don’t think marriage should be the highest achievement a woman can aspire to.

The truth, or at least my truth right now, is that I don’t miss a man in my life. I don’t miss partnership. I don’t miss masculine energy.

But I do miss life.

I miss experiences I have never had. I miss being alone somewhere I have never been. I miss the versions of myself I have yet to discover. I miss the possibility of not knowing exactly what comes next. And perhaps I fear not being able to see, do and become everything I have ever imagined.

How do you explain something like that?

Maybe it sounds selfish. Maybe it isn’t rational. Maybe I will marry again one day. Maybe I won’t. Maybe I was never meant to be a wife. Maybe domestic life simply isn’t the life my heart wants. My heart is too wild to be contained by a role simply because it is expected of me.

My soul wants to soar with the eagles, race with the horses, stand at the edge of cliffs and breathe, fully, freely, in all of its expressions. I want to live as many lives as possible within this one lifetime. To experience. To learn. To change. To become.

And maybe that is the part we forget when we make marriage, motherhood or relationship status the measure of a woman’s life. My children are my life, but they are not my whole life. There is so much more to being a woman than being someone’s wife, someone’s mother, someone’s partner, or someone’s ordinary.

A woman’s life can be a marriage. It can be motherhood. It can be a business. It can be art, travel, friendship, solitude, adventure, service, learning, creation or something that doesn’t yet have a name. It can be all of these things or none of them.

Perhaps the real accomplishment is not becoming the woman everyone expected you to be, but becoming the woman you actually want to be. To move through life with the fluidity of water, always changing, yet grounded in one simple truth: love is a universal language. It doesn’t belong to romantic love alone, nor is it something another person has to give you. It opens not only hearts, but also doors to newness in every possible way.

Because “I am a lover with or without a lover, because love is who I am, not who I’m with.”